Health secretary defends open-ended 'Bioshield' funding

HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson Thursday faced tough questions from both Republicans and Democrats about the department's "Bioshield" proposal to fight bioterrorism.

Legislators at a joint hearing of the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee and the Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee said they generally supported the plan to help expedite the development and production of "countermeasures" such as vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests for potential bioterror agents. Last week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee unanimously approved its version of the measure.

But House members also said they had concerns about some of the plan's specific aspects, most notably its open-ended funding. "This is a blank check of the most extraordinary character I have ever seen," said Energy and Commerce ranking member John Dingell, D-Mich., a concern expressed by several members of both parties.

Thompson responded that the funding is designed in the only way the plan can work to achieve its goal of ensuring private sector involvement. "The government has to create the market" for products like plague vaccines that would otherwise never demonstrate enough commercial value to warrant the investment, Thompson said. "Unless there's mandatory funding, it's less likely the companies will want to go through the process" of developing and manufacturing products to fight such microbes as plague, anthrax, botulinum toxin and tularemia, he said.

Energy and Commerce Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee Chairman John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said he is concerned with the way the program, which seeks $5.6 billion over the next five years, is designed and "whether the money will be enough, and how much will go into research as opposed to acquisition."

And Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chairman Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., was concerned that the government could tie itself into long-term contracts with one firm as another firm develops a better product. "We'd probably have to purchase under the original contract," Thompson said, while at the same time purchasing the better product as well. Even the seemingly less controversial aspects of the measure-including giving the HHS secretary authority to waive FDA approval requirements for products in cases of national emergency-are prompting some concerns. "We have to look at the precedent we're setting," said Rep. Richard Burr, R-N.C.